Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Thousands of pages of previously secret
documents relating to the abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in
the archdiocese of Chicago was published on Tuesday, detailing the
faltering response of senior clerics who routinely swept allegations
under the carpet despite clear evidence of wrongdoing.

Some 6,000 documents,
released as part of a settlement with victims, shed a light on how
allegations against priests were acknowledged within the church
leadership, but were kept secret as those accused of abuses were
shuttled from one parish to another.

One document, from the vicar for priests in April 1990, warned a
church leader not to mention "rumours that have been circulating for the
last 10 years" concerning Mark Holihan, a pastor, and "especially to
say nothing at all" about an allegation by a cook at the church that she
had witnessed him in bed with a young boy.

The same file shows that, four years earlier, Cardinal Bernadin had
received a letter warning him of a "potentially dangerous situation"
regarding the sexual activities of Holihan and "little boys". The letter
specified an incident regarding "my closest friend's son" who said he
had witnessed Holihan molesting an altar boy. The altar boy later told
his mother.

Holihan, who was known by students as "Happy Hands Holilhan", was
subjected to restrictions after the accusations, but was not removed
from public ministry until 2002. He was never defrocked by the
archdiocese and "laicised himself" in 2008, the documents show.

The documents cover only 30 of at least 65 clergy for whom the
archdiocese has substantiated claims of child abuse. The names of
victims have been redacted, Vatican documents related to the 30 cases
were not included, under the negotiated terms of the disclosure.

The records also do not include the files of Daniel McCormack, a
former priest who pleaded guilty in 2007 to abusing five children.
McCormack's case drew an apology from Cardinal Francis George and an
internal investigation of how the archdiocese responds to abuse claims.

Marc Pearlman, one of two attorneys acting for victims of abuse by
Catholic priests, said at a press conference that the documents reveal
the leadership at the archdiocese of Chicago was involved in the
"systematic cover-up" of abuse.

Each file, said Pearlman, "shows the same story: reported abuse,
reported allegations, the archdiocese working hard to cover-up and keep
it secret. The transfer of the priests."

Taken together, they demonstrated a concern, not for the abused, but
that the public would find out that their priests were abusive, he
said. "They knew precisely what they were doing," said Pearlman. "They
were not mistakes."

Among the documents are relatively recent letters from Cardinal
George to Norbert Maday, who is in prison serving a 20 year sentence,
after being found guilty in 1994 for child sex abuse and threatening
witnesse. He was informed by George in a letter written two years later
that he would not be dismissed from the clerical state.

"You have
suffered enough by your present deprivation of ministry and your
incarceration," George wrote.

Another letter from George to Maday, on 4 February 2002,informs him
that the archdiocese had tried, unsuccessfully "a number of avenues to
see if your senten ce might be reduced or parole be given early".

Cardinal George apologised to victims and Catholics, in a letter
distributed to parishes last week. He and said the archdiocese agreed to
turn over the records in an attempt to help the victims heal.

On Tuesday, he released a statement, saying it knows it "made some
decisions decades ago that are now difficult to justify" and that
society has evolved in how it deals with abuse. George said that while
the detail in the documents is "upsetting" and "painful to read", it is
"not the Church we know or the Church we want to be".

The statement, which apologised to the victims and their families, read:

The Archdiocese acknowledges that its leaders made some decisions
decades ago that are now difficult to justify. They made those decisions
in accordance with the prevailing knowledge at the time. In the past 40
years, society has evolved in dealing with matters related to abuse.
Our understanding of and response to domestic violence, sexual
harassment, date rape, and clerical sexual abuse have undergone
significant change and so has the Archdiocese of Chicago. While we
complied with the reporting laws in place at the time, the Church and
its leaders have acknowledged repeatedly that they wished they had done
more and done it sooner, but now are working hard to regain trust, to
reach out to victims and their families, and to make certain that all
children and youth are protected.

Officials in the archdiocese said most of the abuse in the released
files occurred before 1988, that none occurred after 1996 and that all
the cases were ultimately reported to authorities.

The lawyers for the victims said that many of the allegations emerged
after George headed the diocese in 1997. Some of the documents, in
particular a letter from George to Maday in 2002, clearly related to how
the church handled cases much more recently.

For decades, those at the highest levels of the nation's
third-largest archdiocese moved accused priests from parish to parish
while hiding the clerics' histories from the public.

The documents
reveal how the cover-up was perpetrated, and how victims were ignored,
often in mundane detail.

The documents, released through settlements
between attorneys for the archdiocese and victims, describe how the
late Cardinals John Cody and Cardinal Joseph Bernardin often approved
the reassignments.